My therapist told me I might need a talisman, and that there is a triathlon in Baltimore in October I might check out, and that Maintenance would be it's own tricky and brutal passage of less actual physical/medical events, and that I should probably do more day-to-day posts to keep up with my mental and emotional states.
So that's what this post was going to be about.
But then I went against the better judgment of my wife and, right when I was farthest from a hospital stay and likely at the absolute nadir of my blood-count hoopla, I ate a medium-rare steak approximately the size of a broiled infant torso. I did so with a fervor and edginess brought on by the relatively long hangover the last HYPER CVAD steroids have had on me and the relative annoyance I was feeling with a union phone call I was also on while eating. So it could have been a lot prettier. Oh, and I ate all the escarole that came with it, and that might have just been garnish. Esacrole's tricky that way.
Now, granted, eating a huge steak is--for one part of my family--one's duty as an American and one of the few ways to guarantee that the world stays balanced on its axis. It is something near the top of my 'joy' list at all times, and something I will do again countless times before they burn me and spread some of my ashes in a Montana cattle pasture.
But I am in Month 9 of a chemo that has been rattling and sanding at my digestive tract like those automated scrubber robots that keep oil pipelines clean. I have thrown up and not eaten at greater levels since May of last year than the rest of my life combined--leaving out years 0-1 because then I think you're supposed to do that.
And this was a particularly large steak, for NY standards. It could have been a hint that the restaurant is called 'The Bastard' (in Italian to save face, but, still).
And, as I said, because of the vagaries of schedules, this was the longest stretch I had ever gone between leaving a chemo stint and returning for bloodwork and transfusions. We're looking at a full week on our own before the saving grace of a clinic visit, and here I am neck-humping red clods of cow down my gullet like a hyena at a carcass. I think I left my judgment in my other pants.
Long story short, we're in the hospital. N, as she has been every single day since this all began, is asleep on a cot next to me--a cot she has just described as being the least comfortable bed she has ever slept in 'and that includes the worst bed in communist China.' She once again took the brunt of last-second prep and travel that goes with a visit-turned-overnight-shenanigan.
I am trying to type quietly--using her fingers-near-each-key-and-terrifyingly-fast method as opposed to the rear-back-and-smack-the-keys-into-submission-fast-but-not-that-fast version on which I tend to rely. So far she's still predominantly sleeping, but I will end this soon so as not to push my luck. She had to go home to the apartment after we finally got a room on the cancer floor to get overnight gear, so is beat. I'm a tiring life companion: I think I always was, but this cancer shit's just a whole 'nother ball of poisoned wax.
The steak--and, really, the steak tipping the scales to the damage I was already suffering--kept me up two nights ago. I slept maybe an hour and a half. And when I got up I was supported by a screaming vacuum of space where my energy usually resided. Deep breaths to stand, deep breaths to get off the couch. One shoe tied, then rest, then tie the other. I--dancing bear to the end--scheduled a voice over job for first thing in the morning, on the way to the clinic, because I go back on the Decadron for this last Vincristine hit and so knew my voice would not hold out through the end of the day. Pragmatic, yes, but getting through three pages of semi-pumped-up TV show promo copy with only a handful of white blood cells patrolling my body did not a good morning jaunt make.
Then we got to the clinic, where I vaguely remember being in a few chairs with my head in my hands. I have a huge blocky Scandinavian head to begin with, and when I get to this level of weakness the payback for being able to bump into shit without hurting it seems inexplicably out of proportion. To quote David Bowie quoting Bernard Pomerance in 'The Elehpant Man:'
"I think my head is so big because it is so full of dreams"
Ah, well.
N must have--shocker--done most of the work, because my next memory is of being in a reclining chemo chair with the capable and friendly chemo nurse who not only has the honour of dating a Baltimore Ravens fan, but who was recently engaged to said Baltimore Ravens fan and had pictures of her ring on her iPhone.
I was bled and tested, and lo and behold, my white blood cell count was .1. That's .1, ladies and gentleman, which is followed by .0, at which point they start speaking Latin and throwing dirt on you. The super PA up here on the cancer ward corrected me, saying that 'below .1 there is a level, where there are a couple white cells out there somewhere, but, yeah, that's as low as we ever see it.'
Yay! I have excelled! Praise me! Pat my head! Gimme a cookie! Or a steak! (and now you see how we got into this trouble in the first place).
We stayed in the clinic most of the day, I got a bag of platelets and two bags of blood--I was so depleted it was the first time I have ever gotten double-blooded and not felt like a bubbled grey tick on a dog's neck.
And, of greater import, the Drs did not back down, and so I got my Vincristine and the first does of Decadron that mark the last official chemo of the treatment. As soon as I recover from this dive, I am a man on maintenance, no ifs, ands, or buts. It felt horrid-yet-gratifying to cross that final final line. They couldn't tranfuse me with blood while I was in a fever state, but chemo doesn't care, so I got all the bad crap first, and only when I cooled down a bit did I get the good stuff.
I have been afebrile (not feverish, but 'afrebrile' sounds cooler) the whole time we've been on the cancer floor, and the stomache pain has slowly (SLOWLY) but surely subsided to a point where now it is just background hum. The blood cultures they took when my fever spiked downstairs will be 24 hours old today around 2pm, and it is at that point that they either get a name and locale for what ailed you or decide (usually the case) that it was a general fever caused by only having two drunk white cells and their meth-head half-cousin Dougie to patrol your entire body.
Then they usually let you go. They may keep us for observation, but there were apparently 150 people in the ER last night and some other poor cancerous bastards who did not even make it up here to the cancer floor, where the specificity and quality of care is light-years ahead of whatever goes on down there in triage: there are privileges that come with being so immunodeficient that thinking about some else's snot can kill you.
Again, credit to Carlin : "You know that feeling, like wiping off snot...somebody ELSE'S!" and "AAAARGH" go the girls in class.
OK, I am writing too much because I feel human again. Whenever they release us it will be into a world of--granted, three more days of the super-roid decadron--recovery and maintenance.
Then I'll need to figure out that friggin talisman thing the therapist told me about. I love that word; it sounds so cool...
